Headless Raspberry Pi

Although my very first experience with the Raspberry Pi was less than impressive, my subsequent encounter proved fruitful. After following a youtube tutorial, I learned that my initial 8GB micro SD card had NOOBS installed. While it is intended for noobies maybe, I guess my use-case was sufficiently off-track to derail my noob attempt. I don’t have an extra monitor, keyboard and mouse lying around the house, so I needed to interact with a “headless” raspberry pi. I needed to interact with the pi using only my laptop, a network cable, and eventually a wifi adapter. My first step was to burn my own Raspian OS image onto a 64GB micro SD card. A 64GB is not needed. Raspbian doesn’t require anywhere near that much; an 8GB card will do nicely. Being Christmas, I just happened to have access to a new camera’s 64GB card…sorry Robyn (my spouse). I’ll replace it, promise. Pick up the OS image and instructions up from the Raspberry Pi site. Rather than recreate the entire experience here, I’ll point you again to the Youtube video above. It worked as advertised. Use Part 2 of the tutorial to add remote GUI and VNC abilities. Then, check out Part 4 of that tutorial when you’re ready to add a wifi USB adapter to the mix. I’m not certain how long this process took, but it happened while re-watching Star Wars IV (A New Hope). So, there you have it. I’m up and running on my new Raspberry Pi!